CHINQUAPIN OAK
(Quercus Acuminata)
This tree is known as yellow chestnut oak, chinquapin oak, chestnut oak, pin oak, yellow oak, scrub oak, dwarf chestnut oak, shrub oak, and rock oak. It should not be confused with Quercus prinus, the true chestnut oak, although it is commonly known in so many sections of the country by the latter name; the names yellow oak, pin oak, and scrub oak are likewise applied to many species, so that the only way to accurately designate members of this great family is to employ their botanical names. However, this species should always be known as the chinquapin oak, which is a distinctive term, and not applied to any other.
The bark of this tree is light gray and is broken into thin flakes, silvery-white, sometimes slightly tinted with brown, rarely half an inch thick. The branchlets are marked with pale lenticels.
The leaves of the chinquapin oak are from five to seven inches long, simple and alternate; they have a taper-pointed apex and blunt, wedge-shaped or pointed base; are sharply toothed. When unfolding they show bright bronze-green above, tinged with purple, and are covered underneath with light silvery down; at maturity they become thick and firm, showing greenish-yellow on the upper surface and silvery-white below. The midrib is conspicuous and the veins extending outward to the points of the teeth are well-defined. In autumn the leaves turn orange and scarlet and are very showy. The leaves are narrow, hardly two inches wide, and more nearly resemble those of the chestnut than do any other oak leaves. In their broadest forms they are also similar to those of the true chestnut oak, although the difference in the quality and color of the bark, and of the leaves, would prevent either tree from being mistaken for the other. They are crowded at the ends of the branches and hang in such a manner as to show their under surfaces with every touch of breeze. This characteristic gives the chinquapin oak a peculiar effect of constantly shifting color which is one of its most attractive features and which puts the observer in mind of the trembling aspen, although the shading and coloring of the oak is much more striking.
This tree’s range extends from northern New York, along Lake Champlain and the Hudson river westward through southern Ontario, and southward into parts of Nebraska and Kansas; on its eastern boundary it extends as far south as the District of Columbia and along the upper Potomac; the growth west of the Alleghany mountains reaches into central Alabama and Mississippi, through Arkansas and the northern portion of Louisiana to the eastern part of Oklahoma and parts of Texas even to the canyons of the Guadalupe mountains, in the extreme western part of that state. It is a timber tree of much importance in Texas, and in 1910 manufacturers reported the use of 1,152,000 feet in that state, largely for making furniture and vegetable crates.
The chinquapin oak is named from the form of its leaf. Its acorn bears no resemblance to the nut of chinquapin. Trees average smaller in size than white oak, but when all circumstances are favorable they compare well with any of the other oaks. In the lower Wabash valley, trees of this species were found in the original forests 160 feet high and four or five in diameter. When it grows in crowded stands it develops a tall, symmetrical trunk, clear of limbs; but it is shorter in open growth. The base is often much buttressed.
The wood is very heavy, hard, strong, stiff, and durable. In color the heartwood is dark, the sapwood lighter. The springwood is narrow and filled with large pores, the summerwood broad and dense. Medullary rays are less numerous and scarcely as broad as in chestnut oak, which this wood resembles. It checks badly in drying, both by kiln and in the open air; but when properly seasoned it is an excellent wood for most purposes for which white oak is used. It shows fewer figures when quarter-sawed than white oak shows, but it is satisfactory for many kinds of furniture, particularly when finished in mission style.
Railroads throughout the region where this species is found have laid chinquapin oak ties in their tracks for many years and they give long service, because they resist decay and are hard enough to stand the wear of the rails. In early times in the Ohio valley it helped to fence many a farm when the material for such fences was the old style fence rail, eleven feet long, mauled from the straightest, clearest timber afforded by the primeval forest. It had for companions many other oaks which were abundant there, and it was on a par with the best of them. In the first years of steamboating on the Ohio river, when the engines used wood for fuel, they provided a market for many an old rail fence. The rails were the best obtainable fuel, and the chinquapin oak rails in the heaps were carefully looked for by the purchasers, because they were rated high in fuel value. It is now known that chinquapin oak in combustion develops considerably more heat than an equal quantity of white oak.
When southern Indiana and Illinois were furnishing coopers with their best staves, chinquapin oak was ricked with white oak, and no barrel maker ever complained. The pores in the wood seem large, but in old timber which is largely heartwood, the pores become clogged by the processes of nature, and the wood is made proof against leakage. That is what gives white oak its superiority as stave timber. It has as many pores as red oak, but upon close examination under a magnifying glass, they are found to be plugged, while red oak’s pores are wide open. The result is that red oak barrels leak through the wood; those made of white oak do not. Chinquapin oak possesses the same properties, which account for its reputation as stave material.
The future for chinquapin oak is not quite as promising as that of chestnut oak. The former’s choice growing place is on rich soil and in damp situations. These happen to be what the farmer wants, and he will not leave the chinquapin oak alone to grow in nature’s method, nor will he plant its acorns in places where the trees will interfere with his cornfields and meadows. Consequently, the tree is apt to receive scant consideration after the original forests have disappeared; while its poor cousin, the chestnut oak, will be left to make its way on sterile ridges, and may even receive some help from the forester and woodlot owner.
Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) is often considered to be the largest hardwood of the Pacific coast. Trunk diameters of ten feet have been recorded, and heights more than 100; but such measurements belong only to rare and extraordinary individuals. The average size of the tree is less than half of that. The most famous tree of this species is the Sir Joseph Hooker oak, near Chico, California, though it is not the largest. It is seven feet in diameter and 100 high. It was named by the botanist Asa Gray in 1877. This species is commonly called California white oak, which name would be unobjectionable if it were the only white oak in California. A more distinctive name is weeping oak, which refers to the appearance of the outer branches. It is called swamp oak, but without good reason, though the ground on which it grows is often swampy during the rainy season. The name valley oak is specially appropriate, since its favorite habitat is in the broad valleys of central California. Its range does not go outside that state, neither does the tree grow very high on the mountains. Its range begins in the upper Sacramento valley and extends to Tejon, south of Lake Tulare, a distance north and south of about five hundred miles, while east and west the tree is found from the Sierra foothills to the sea, 150 or 200 miles. Its characteristic growth is in scattered stands. It does not form forests in the ordinary sense. Two or three large trees to the acre are an average, and often many acres are wholly missed. The form of trees, and the wide spaces between them, resemble an old apple orchard, though few apple trees live to attain the dimensions of the valley oak of ordinary size. The best stands were originally in the Santa Clara valley and in the central part of the San Joaquin valley in the salt grass region north of Lake Tulare in Kings and Fresno counties. Most of the largest trees were cut long ago.
The leaves are lobed like white oak (Quercus alba) but are smaller, seldom more than four inches long and two wide. The acorns are uncommonly long, some of them being two and a half inches, sharp pointed, with shallow cups. The wood of this oak is brash and breaks easily. It is far below good eastern oak in strength and elasticity. It weighs 46.17 pounds per cubic foot. The tree grows rapidly, and its wide, clearly defined annual rings are largely dense summerwood. The springwood is perforated with large pores. The color of the wood is light brown, the sapwood lighter. Except as fuel, the uses found for valley oak hardly come up to what might be expected of a tree so large. It is not difficult, or at least was not difficult once, to cut logs sixteen feet long and from three to five in diameter. Such logs ought to make good lumber. The medullary rays indicate that the wood can be quarter-sawed to advantage; yet there is no account that any serious attempt was ever made to convert the valley oak into lumber. The wood has some objectionable properties, but it has escaped the sawmill chiefly because hardwood mills have never been numerous in California, and they have been especially few in the regions where the best valley oaks grow. The tree has been a great source of fuel. It usually divides twenty or thirty feet from the ground into large, wide-spreading branches, tempting to the woodchopper. In central California, twenty or thirty years ago, it was not unusual to haul this cordwood twenty-five miles to market. Stockmen employed posts and rails split from valley oak to enclose corrals and pens on the open plains for holding cattle, sheep, and horses. The acorns are edible, and were formerly an article of food for Indians who gathered them in considerable quantities in the fall and stored them for winter in large baskets which were secured high in the forks of trees to be out of reach of all ordinary marauders. The baskets were made rain proof by roofing and wrapping them with grass. When the time came for eating the acorns, they were prepared for use by hulling them and then pounding them into meal in stone mortars. The hulling was done with the teeth, and was the work of squaws. The custom of eating the acorns has largely ceased with the passing of the wild Indians from their former camping places; but the stone mortars by hundreds remain in the vicinity of former stands of valley oak.
This splendid tree is highly ornamental, but it has not been planted, and perhaps it will not become popular. Nature seems to have confined it to a certain climate, and it is not known that it will thrive outside of it. It will certainly disappear from many of the valleys where the largest trees once grew. The land is being taken for fields and vineyards, and the oaks are removed. Some will remain in canyons and rough places where the land is not wanted, and one of the finest species of the United States will cease to pass entirely from earth. The largest of these oaks have a spread of branches covering more than one-third of an acre.
Chinquapin oak branch
